OpenAI has launched a web crawler to improve its artificial intelligence models. GPTBot will scour the web for data while strictly filtering out any paywall-restricted sources, sources that violate OpenAI's policies, or sources that gather personally identifiable information. Web admins will be able to choose whether or not to grant the bot access to their websites. The launch of the bot has opened up complex debates about ownership, fair use, and the incentives of web creators.
Apple was by far TSMC's largest customer in 2022. The company has reportedly bought up all of TSMC's 3 nm manufacturing capacity for roughly a year. The deal has apparently been in place since 2014 when Apple started using TSMC's factories. Part of the deal involves TSMC eating the cost of defective processor dies, chips that don't work or don't perform to the required specifications, which can result in substantial savings for Apple.
Researchers at the federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have achieved net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the second time. The team first achieved ignition for the first time last year. They repeated the breakthrough on July 30 and produced a higher energy output than the previous ignition. Initial data shows that the experiment outputted more than 3.5 megajoules, roughly enough to power a household iron for an hour.
PayPal is launching its own stablecoin over the coming weeks to customers in the US. PayPalUSD (PYUSD) is a cryptocurrency token built on Ethereum and issued by the Paxos Trust Company that is fully backed by US dollar deposits. It can be purchased or sold on PayPal's app or website for $1.00 per PYUSD. PYUSD can be used for person-to-person payments, payment at checkouts, and transfers between PayPal accounts and outside wallets. Users can convert currencies supported by PayPal to and from PYUSD.
Next.js Commerce 2.0 is a new ecommerce accelerator template that showcases the best patterns for building composable commerce applications. It is App Router ready and features a dynamic storefront and simplified architecture. Next.js Commerce 2.0 supports BigCommerce, Medusa, Saleor, Shopify, and Swell. A live demo is available.
Doculite enables users to use SQLite as a document database. It makes using SQLite like using Firebase Firestore. Doculite supports listeners on documents, collections, and basic queries.
A Hacker News thread about the most interesting things readers have done that aren't software related. The top answers include making string art, designing a baseball bat that uses explosive blanks to hit baseballs really far, and building a scanning tunneling microscope.
Edsger Dijkstra introduced some of the biggest ideas in distributed and concurrent computing during his career. Throughout the years, Dijkstra ramped down his involvement with his university so that he only visited campus one day per week. He seemed to be the opposite of busy, yet he was outputting a large amount of work. This observation hints that busyness might actually be an obstacle to accomplishing your best work.